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The Titanomachy
The Titanomachy was the conflict between the Titans and the Olympian gods. It was initiated due to the actions of Kronos swallowing his children in an attempt to forestall the curse placed upon him by his father Ouranos. Description Instigating Events Kronos, the King of the Titans, had ruled the planet for almost three million years. This time was known as the Golden Age by the Titans, and under Kronos’s rule, their family experienced untold prosperity, and witnessed the rise of the early, primitive humans such as Homo Neanderthalis. Near the end of his reign, Kronos had taken to wife his sister Rhea, loveliest and gentlest of the Titans, and together, they had a child named Hestia. Kronos, seeing that she was a more advanced being than the other Titans, recalled the curse cast upon him by his father Ouranos for his betrayal eons before, and feared that his daughter would one day overthrow him, and thus, swallowed her whole. He would do the same with his four subsequent children, with the youngest of them, Zeus, being hidden away by Rhea, with Kronos devouring a baby shaped boulder instead. Onset Once Zeus was grown, he infiltrated Kronos’s palace and fed him a potion which caused his siblings to be disgorged, and subsequently, they declared war on their father, thus beginning the ten year conflict known as the Titanomachy. After fighting several unsuccessful battles against the Titans, gods realized they would need to journey into Tartarus, where Kronos had imprisoned his monstrous brothers, the Elder Cyclopes and Hekatonkhieres to recruit them as allies. With the exception of Hestia, they all ventured there, where they defeated Kampe, the terrifying jailor appointed by Kronos to contain his siblings, and the monstrous hordes at her command. In gratitude for being freed, the Elder Cyclopes forged powerful weapons for each one of the gods who had participated in their liberation, and they and the Hekatonkhieres both agreed to battle with the gods against Kronos. Meanwhile, Hestia journeyed with her mother Rhea to several of the Titans, and convinced them to remain neutral in the war. Whilst Kronos was feared and respected as a ruler, he was not loved, and thusly, many Titans refrained from participating on either side. The Final Battle After returning from Tartarus, the gods claimed Mount Olympus, the second tallest mountain in Greece, as their stronghold and base, which led them to style themselves the Olympians. From their new stronghold, they would launch an attack against Mount Othrys, where Kronos’s palace was located. Using the power of his newly forged Master Bolt, Zeus blasted the top off of Mount Othrys, utterly destroying the palace and hurling the occupants off the mountain. Immediately after, the Hundred-Handed Hekatonkhieres rained down hundreds of boulders upon them, leaving them heavily disoriented upon the attack of the Olympians. Only the leadership and might of Kronos kept them from being immediately crushed. The Titan Lord unleashed his power over time, slowing the movement of the Olympians, and giving his fellow Titans the time they needed to recover and ready themselves. The battle that took place shaped the landscape around them, with the Titans putting up a tremendous fight, but being ultimately unable to match the power of the Olympians. Zeus struck the blow that defeated Kronos, and wrenching his father’s scythe from his grasp, he sliced him into a thousand pieces. Subsequently, he cast the pieces into Tartarus, along with Kronos’s brothers, Hyperion, Koios, Krios, and Iapetus, his half brother Phorcys, and his nephews, Pallas and Perses. Atlas, another nephew, and Kronos’s most fearsome general, who in the early years of the war, had dealt the Olympians several stinging defeats, had a different punishment set for him. The Olympians were aware that the four brothers of Kronos were integral in the spell that kept the Protogenos Ouranos from manifesting, and thusly, Hades, cleverest among the Olympians, devised a way to alter the spell. Instead of relying on the presence of the four siblings, Ouranos’s presence would instead be held at bay by a single being at a singular point, sustaining the spell by holding up the mystical weight of the Heavens. After Atlas’s punishment was enacted, the Olympians crafted a realm for themselves, the entrance to which would be located on the peak of Mount Olympus. Thus began their rule, which would last for millennia.